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Unreported farm murder: Gerrit Steenkamp, Bothaville

‘Censorbugbear-reports’ member Coert Botha, who now lives in Australia, sent us the following information on a hitherto unreported, gruesome farm murder of a friend of his. All the Afrikaans-language court reports below about the following trial of two black men were written by journalist Tom de Wet and obtained from the archives of Volksblad newspaper in Bloemfontein.

Sept 26 1998 - Two black men, James Ntulwane, 30 and Clement Ratselane, 24, were convicted of murdering and mutilating the unmarried Afrikaans farmer Gerrit Steenkamp, 39, left, on his Bothaville farm on 13 August 1997 after abducting him from his maize-harvester. Steenkamp had spent all day harvesting maize. The men were sentenced to life-imprisonment.

Steenkamp, a gifted musician who obtained a master’s degree in music at the University of the Free State before he went to run the family farm fulltime after the death of his father, was a nephew of Mrs Wilma Swanepoel, on whose Bothaville farm at around the same time two armed attackers had also been shot dead and five more arrested by a police- and farm-security patrol who had been alerted in time to thwart an armed farm attack by this huge gang.

Extensive forensic evidence was presented by senor superintendent Helena Ras, forensic-analyst at the police forensic science laboratory, that hair-samples found on the scene matched 22 morphological identity points belonging to that of the accused murderers, who consistently denied killing him and removing his foreskin and left-testicle for sale as ‘traditional medicine’ (‘muti”) .

The two suspects claimed throughout their trial that all the evidence against them had been fabricated, including the fact that shoes belonging to the accused at the time of their arrest, had closely matched foot-tracks at the scene of the crime, and which were followed by SAPS inspector Nicolaas de Kock and sergeant David Silas, an Ovambo tracker, matching the soles of the shoes worn by Ntulwane, of of the two accused at the time of their arrests.

Sergeant Dirk Steyn, investigating officer, testified that on the morning of 14 August, he had tracked three sets of human footsteps – with Steenkamp clearly walking in between two other men – from Steenkamp’s farm vehicle to a barn on a neighbouring farm, ‘where there had clearly been a struggle,’ he testified. The tracks then were followed to workers’ houses on another farm, where Ntulwane, wearing matched shoes, was arrested. Steyn testified that ‘after hearing reports that Ratselane, 24 was involved in ‘witchcraft,materials.’ Usually, human tissue harvested for witchcraft were handed over to older people in the tribe, and the tissue was never found back, he told the court.

Ratselane, a former worker of Steenkamp’s, was arrested on another farm with a ‘large plastic bag filled with the farmer’s hair’ in his possession, mixed in with tribal medicine.

A woman there also identified Steenkamp’s bank-card as having been in Ratselane’s possession, which she picked up after the witchdoctor had discarded it. Steenkamp’s own wallet with about R200 ($20) and two bunches of keys, were never found.

Dr. Etienne Swart, district surgeon, testified that from all the forensic indications, it was evident that Steenkamp had after his abduction after a day of maize-harvesting, the farmer had been forced to climb through a hole in the wooden floor of the vacant farm house while he was alive – and then bashed with ‘something similar to a brick’ under the chin which had broken his neck and chin. His sexual organs were mutilated afterwards and more than likely sold for use in ‘traditional medicine’, usually the younger man doing the harvesting, would have sold the tissue to an older person in the tribe.

FARM NOW LIES FALLOW, UNUSED; 70 FARM FAMILIES LOST INCOME:

Mr Botha, who also was a gifted musician, had 70 workers living on his farm with their families. All lost their jobs and had to move away from the farm because his mother, Martha, was unable to manage the farm by herself, and moved to town. He farmed with livestock, sheep and seed-crops.

Ever since that time, the farm has remained fallow and unoccupied, reports Mr Botha, because ‘everyone is too scared to live in the homestead’ after the witchcraft-murder’. One of the two murderers has since died of AIDS in prison, reports Mr Botha, who emigrated to Australia after the murder.

The two murderers were sentenced to life in prison ‘because these hardened, vengeful and heartless people are not susceptible to rehabiliation’, said Judge G van Coppenhagen of the Virginia High Court in his summary.

Below are the reports as archived by the Volksblad newspaper in Bloemfontein concerning this case, in Afrikaans:

The term "genocide" was coined by legal scholar Raphael Lemkin in 1943, writing:

'Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actionsaiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.

The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of personal security, liberty, health, dignity and lives of the members of such groups... '